Choice and Rationing Needed After School Closures

Don't Fence Us Out!

In the Google Street View above, the fence around Dartmouth Elementary is in the foreground, and houses that are newly zoned to be outside the Dartmouth attendance zone are in the background. Right across the street from the school. This can't be the best solution Richardson ISD can come up with for needed school consolidation. I'm here with a better idea.

Public Facility Corporations and Richardson

Richardson ISD Student Density

The Richardson City Council held a short meeting on February 19, 2024, where most of the substantive discussion took place behind closed doors, in executive session, which the public (and by that, I especially mean yours truly) was not privy to. So the rest of this blog post is based on conjecture.

Musical Chairs with RISD School Closures

The Richardson ISD announced that due to a severe budget shortfall, it is necessary to consolidate (i.e., close) five elementary schools. One of them is Springridge Elementary. Its students are to be reassigned mostly to Dartmouth Elementary. The big problem with that plan is that there isn't enough room at Dartmouth for all the students vacating Springridge.

The RISD's solution involves, first, reassigning 42 students who live in the Forestridge Elementary attendance area, but for various historical reasons were assigned to Springridge, back to Forestridge. And second, like dominos, changing an attendance boundary to reassign 113 Dartmouth students to Yale Elementary to create enough room to transfer the remaining 221 Springridge students to Dartmouth.

I thought I had a better solution.

The Marvels (2023)

Rotten Tomatoes

The Marvels (2023): Don't think about wormholes and "jump points" and the Supreme Intelligence and you'll enjoy this silly romp. Reminded me of "Everything Everywhere All at Once", Bollywood, Cats, and even Star Trek ("The Trouble with Tribbles"), all while three female superheros save the universe. B-

Disney+

POTD: Bananas for Sale in Lombok

"Five million souls live
with Ranjani's constant threat.
Lombok's restless heart."
—h/t ChatGPT

From 2023 04 05 Lombok

Today's photo-of-the-day was taken on the island of Lombok, Indonesia, about the same size as Bali, which is just to its west. Lombok is home to over 5 million Indonesians, one of whom is shown here. If Lombok makes the news in America, it's most likely because of a volcanic eruption. The island's geography is dominated by the 12,224 ft stratovolcano Mount Ranjani, an active volcano that had a large eruption as recently as 2010. One of the largest volcanic eruptions in world history occurred on Lombok in 1257.